About “Riptide”

The intro and first single to Vance Joy’s debut EP God Loves You When You’re Dancing was a critical and commercial success. Critics praised its clever lyrics filled with pop culture references. It peaked at 30 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.

It is a weird mish-mash of ideas. Sometimes, you know, I will try to write and stick a bunch of different ideas and images together and it wont work and I’ll think, “oh, that doesn’t sound right” or “it sounds too weird and it all conflicts with each other,” but for some reason that all came together well for “Riptide,” and when things happen like that it is a bit beyond your control. I had a bunch of different ideas and words, it wasn’t even a general story line like I was referring to an experience or anything. It is more like a stream of consciousness. – Vance Joy

According to an interview with American Songwriter, the song remained untouched and unfinished for four years from when Vance started writing it in 2008 until 2012. During long afternoons while his roommate was at work, he would work on it bit by bit. One day after a brief trip to the store, he returned home and played the melody on the ukulele, which he built on in order to finish the song a few days later.

What have the artists said about the song?

This song started in 2008 with a couple of lines that I didn’t think much of, the first two lines of the verse – the one about dentists in the dark – and then in 2012 I wrote a melody on the ukulele which ended up being the chorus melody. It’s a real patchwork, this song, of images and ideas. I met a magician’s assistant around the time I was writing the song and so she kind of found her way into the song. Michelle Pfeiffer, I don’t know where that came from – I was kind of envisaging a character that had ambitions of stardom or something like that. That’s the kind of character Michelle Pfeiffer was in The Fabulous Baker Boys and that’s what came to mind, so I used that reference to set it up. Once it all came together, it somehow made sense given it’s such an eclectic mix of bits.